The Enterprise of England (14 page)

With that I gave Hector his head, kicked him once, and we flew away down the road, casting up a shower of mud clods in Berden’s path. Behind me I heard his laugh and the thud of his horse breaking into a gallop. The chestnut was not a bad animal, but he was no match for Hector. After several miles I slowed Hector to a steady canter, then a trot, then finally let him amble along while we waited for Berden to catch up with us. I was a little breathless myself, my nose and cheeks burning from the cold wind.

Eventually Berden reached us, still laughing.

‘Pax!’ he said. ‘I concede the victory. I would never have thought the piebald had such speed in him.’

Hector was plodding along placidly now, like a little girl’s quiet first pony.

‘He is full of surprises,’ I said. ‘It does him good to stretch his legs from time to time. I think he grows weary when he spends too long in the stable. Your horse is not so bad, nor are you. When I have ridden with Phelippes, it has been like an old ladies’ picnic, but do not tell him I said so.’

‘I am sworn to secrecy,’ he said. ‘Shall we carry on? But perhaps not quite so fast?’

I nodded and set Hector to his beautiful smooth canter. I have never know a horse with such a lovely gait, not even my grandfather’s prize stallion. He never seemed to tire, but was happy to continue at this pace for mile after mile.

Around midday we stopped to rest the horses and let them graze on the strip of sward beside the road, while we sat under a wide-spreading oak which still bore its leaves, unlike most other trees, and ate some of our food. Berden even dropped into a doze for a while. I suppose for him this was no more than another journey like a hundred others he had made. I could not relax, for my mind raced ahead to what might happen when we reached Amsterdam. And if we travelled near the Spanish army – what then? My heart jumped in panic. I hoped that part of our mission might change.

After about an hour, Berden woke neatly from his sleep, as though his body held its own internal clock. We mounted again and carried on. The further we travelled from
London, the colder it grew, and as the dull November darkness drew in scarce halfway through the afternoon, we reached Maidstone and found an inn for the night. Since we were travelling on government business, we could have demanded free lodging and dinner by showing our passes, but we did not want to draw attention to ourselves, so we paid our reckoning. I had not stopped to think, until the very moment we spoke to the innkeeper, that Berden would expect us to share a room. Scarcely on our way, and already I was in danger of discovery. I was filled with panic, wondering how I could avoid it, but I need not have worried. When we retired to a chamber up under the roof, straight after eating a plain but substantial meal, Berden simply pulled off his boots and lay down on one of the truckle beds, rolling himself in the blankets and turning away from the light of our candle. I did the same. I prised off my boots, which were still stiff from the cold, for we had not been able to find a place near the fire while we ate. I laid Simon’s cloak over the blankets for extra warmth and blew out the candle. The cloak, close to my face, carried a faint scent of Simon about it, which was somehow comforting, but before I could think any more about it, I was asleep.

The second day started much the same as the first, but before we stopped for a midday rest, it had begun to snow. Only a few scattered flakes at first, but Berden suggested that we should stop before it grew worse.

‘We won’t want to be sitting still eating in a full blown snow storm,’ he said.

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘And the horses need to graze before the grass is covered.’

Angry black clouds were building up in the northwest, heavy with threat. We turned the horses on to grass and ate quickly. Berden did not sleep this time, and I took the opportunity to unpack my thick scarf and wind it around my face and neck, over the hood of my cloak. By the time we were ready to mount, the snow was already coming down more heavily and the sky had darkened almost to night.

The previous day I had found a fallen tree to use as a mounting block, for Hector was a big horse, but today I could see nothing. Berden’s horse was at least a hand and a half shorter, and he was taller than I, so he could mount easily, without a block.

Seeing me looking around, he said, ‘I’ll give you a leg up.’

I put my left foot in his cupped hands and he heaved me up till I could throw my right leg over Hector’s back.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘You should not ride a horse you cannot mount without help.’

‘A trooper I know told me they are trained to vault on to their horses from the rear, if need arises,’ I said, ‘but I am not sure Hector would like it. I could be kicked in the face for my pains.’

‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘Once we are across the sea, I’ll help you train him. You need to accustom him to being approached from behind. He seems a good-natured beast. It should not be too difficult. In this business you never know when you will need to mount in a hurry.’

We set off again without further talk and increased our pace gradually to a gallop, trying – unsuccessfully – to outrun the storm. By the time we reached Dover it was midnight black, although it cannot have been later than four of the clock. For the last hour we had been fighting our way through ever denser snow as well as the growing darkness. Our clothes and our horses were encased in a armour of frozen snow. The only relief was the fact that the wind blew from behind us and not in our faces.

Showing our passes at the city gate, we were waved through, then Berden led the way to the castle
up through deserted streets already nearly a foot deep in snow. Once again our passes admitted us inside the castle wall, where flaring torches lit up a courtyard with more activity than we had seen in the whole town below.

Berden hailed a passing trooper. ‘Messengers from Sir Francis Walsingham, carrying despatches for the Earl of Leicester in the
Low Countries. Where can we stable our horses?’

He looked up at us, sheltering his eyes with his hand from the blowing snow.

‘Follow me. It’s this way.’

I slid down from the saddle. My feet were so numb I could not feel the ground and my knees gave way a little as I landed. Steadying myself against Hector’s side, I flipped the reins forward over his head and followed Berden and the trooper across a slippery cobbled yard towards a run of outbuildings. Stables, storage barns, a smithy whose fire gave a welcome glow, though we could not stop to warm ourselves. The trooper struggled to draw back the bolt across the stable door and another man came to help him.

‘Already icing up,’ he said, through gritted teeth. His hands were blue with the cold. ‘I’ve never known snow in November as bad as this b’yer lady storm. Not even with us stuck here on this rock with everything the sea can throw at us.’

Between them the men managed to open the door and we led the horses inside. There was an enclosed candle lantern hanging just inside the door, and another at the far end of the stables. A narrow passageway led towards it, with stalls on either side. There would be no open candles or sconces in a stable, where the slightest spark could set all that straw and hay alight in a moment.

‘There’s two empty stalls along here,’ the trooper said. The second man had disappeared. He pulled open the half doors to two adjacent stalls. ‘There’s hay in the mangers. I’ll fetch you a couple of buckets of water.’

‘Thank you,’ Berden said.

‘Have you any bran mash?’ I asked. ‘We have ridden hard, all the way from Maidstone. Our horses need something more than hay.’

‘I’ll ask the head groom,’ he said, and went back the way we had come.

I unbuckled my saddlebags and laid them in the passageway outside the stall, then lifted off Hector’s saddle and set it on a rack beside the door. When I removed his bridle he shook his head and blew out a gusty breath of relief. It had been a hard day for him. Some life was coming back into my frozen fingers as I rubbed him down with a fistful of straw, while he inspected the hay, which was fresh and plentiful, though I hoped the trooper would find him something more sustaining. By the time I had rubbed Hector’s coat dry of melting snow and checked his hooves for lumps of ice as best I could in the dim light, the trooper was back with the water. Hector had had long enough now since his wild run and had eaten something, so I let him drink, though I moved the bucket away before he had too much.

‘The groom is making up some bran mash,’ the trooper said. ‘He’ll bring it over. I need to get back to my duties.’

‘We’re grateful to you,’ I said.

Berden looked over the partition between the stalls.

‘We need to report to your commander,’ he said, ‘once we’ve seen to the horses. And we’d be glad of a meal. It was a bitterly cold ride.’

‘Aye, come over to the keep when you’re done. Anyone can show you to the commander’s room. We eat in about an hour. You’ll hear the bell. Just follow everyone else.’

With that he was gone, but I could see the groom approaching with two more buckets. He handed them to us, gave us a smile and a nod, but said nothing before he vanished into the shadows again. Hector plunged his muzzle gratefully into the bucket while I opened one of the saddlebags and pulled out the horse blanket folded on top of my knapsack. By the time I had it buckled in place, Hector had finished the mash and was nosing about hopefully in the empty bucket, until it fell over with a clatter. There was still some hay left in the manger and I put the water bucket where he could reach it. With the blanket on, he should be warm enough, for nearly every stall was occupied and the horses generated their own warmth.

‘Ready?’ said Berden, looking in the door of my stall.

‘Aye, I’m ready.’ I picked up the empty bucket that had contained the mash in one hand and closed and latched the door to the stall with the other. I gathered up the saddlebags by their central strap and followed Berden back to the door of the stables.

‘Might as well leave the empty buckets here,’ he said.

‘Aye.’ I put mine down and together we heaved the door open. It was a struggle to bolt it, but we succeeded at last. The wind had grown even fiercer, so we lowered our heads and staggered through it to the keep. Now that I was no longer occupied with Hector, I was conscious that my cloak was sodden and the wet had soaked through the shoulders of my doublet and shirt to my very skin. My feet, no longer numb, throbbed with pain. All I wanted was dry clothes and warmth, but first we must report to the commander of the garrison here at Dover Castle.

We found the commander’s quarters without difficulty and a shouted ‘Enter’ summoned us to his presence. We went in, leaving our baggage just inside the door. The room was luxuriously furnished with thick rugs on the floor and what looked like expensive tapestries on the walls, more suited to a gentleman’s country house than a military barracks. A great fire of logs blazed in the fireplace and almost at once Berden and I began to steam like a pair of cookpots coming to the boil. I tried to edge sideways nearer to the fire, but a fierce look from the man behind the desk stopped me where I stood. We were not invited to sit.

Sir Anthony Torrington was probably in his early sixties, a man sleek with good living, an assumption borne out by the choleric shade of his countenance. His beard and hair were quite white, so he might have been older. Their pure snowy colour contrasted strikingly with the red of his skin and the fine purple veins that were beginning to break through on his nose. With no other evidence to support the idea, I was convinced that this was not a man experienced in the rigours of the battlefield.

‘Well?’ he said, looking at us as if we were some disagreeable object he had neither time nor inclination to deal with.

I left it to Berden to reply, glad to retire behind my position as the junior here.

‘Sir Anthony,’ said Berden, bowing politely and summoning, despite his evident exhaustion, a small smile. ‘My companion and I are travelling from Sir Francis Walsingham, carrying despatches to my lord Leicester in the
Low Countries.’

He leaned over the desk and laid our passes in front of the commander.

‘As you will see, we are granted quarter in all English military posts. We are also required to commandeer a ship to take us across the Channel at the earliest opportunity.’

The captain cast a cursory glance at the papers and pushed them back towards Berden.

‘I daresay we can accommodate you for a brief period, but we are on high alert here and the garrison is at full strength. I will not have any of my men put to inconvenience.’

‘It is my hope,’ said Berden, ‘that we need trouble you for one night only. We would like to take ship tomorrow.’

A grunt from the commander. ‘You will need to speak to the naval commander about that, though I doubt whether any of his ships’ captains will be willing to make the crossing in the present storm.’

‘Thank you, sir. Let us hope it will have blown itself out by then.’

‘Very well.’ He waved his hand as though he were brushing away a troublesome fly, and we were dismissed, collecting our baggage and closing the door quietly behind us. I raised my eyebrows at Berden and he threw up his eyes expressively to the ceiling, but neither of us said anything.

We walked back the way we had come, to the central hall, leaving a double trail of wet footprints and drips along the stone floor. There was a fireplace here and I made for it like a bee to nectar. Berden joined me. We were both hoping that the bell to summon us to eat would ring soon.